Galaxy Of Fear_ The Hunger Part 3

Platt shrugged. "Think anything you want."

Zak frowned. "Do you ever work for the Empire?"

The smuggler laughed. "I might, if the price was right. But mostly I carry stuff the Empire says is illegal to people who want it anyway. So I guess you could say I work for the other side."

Zak's eyes brightened. "Do you ever work for the Rebellion?"

"Sometimes. I don't mind doing a job for them now and then, when they can pay. I consider it a bonus to be able to stick it to the Imps."

"Imps?" he asked.

"Imperials," Platt said. "I don't really take sides, but if I had my way, all the Imps could jump into hypers.p.a.ce and never jump back."

That was good enough for Zak.

Platt, the Twi'lek called Tru'eb, and the rest of their gang were trying to set up a new base of operations. Because of all the Imperial activity in every corner of s.p.a.ce, not to mention compet.i.tion from other smugglers, they wanted to find someplace unknown to the rest of the galaxy. Platt had heard of the information stored at the Research Academy and decided to make use of it.

Tash and Hoole had been reviewing information about Dagobah. They found Zak and Platt and brought them up to date on what they had learned.

"Dagobah is covered by swamps," Tash said. "The research team that went to study it never returned. We found only a few of their recorded entries. It looks like they started having trouble after a couple of months on the planet. They sent out a distress signal, but no one answered it, at least not by the time they made their last entry.

"It appears that the automatic distress signal was picked up years later by a pa.s.sing freighter," Hoole said. "They recovered the team's research logs, but found no survivors."

Zak's jaw dropped. "And this is where we're going? It sounds dangerous."

Platt yawned. "Relax, kid. Those science teams are usually a bunch of pinheads who spend all their time looking at bugs and not watching where they're going. Besides, I want someplace no one else wants to go."

"So do we," said Tash.

"Yeah, well, I've been meaning to ask you," the smuggler said. "Why are you looking for a deserted planet? Are you in some kind of trouble?"

Hoole answered her question. "We need to avoid the Imperials. Let's leave it at that."

"So you're on the run," Platt said. "You're welcome to come with us to Dagobah for now. Once we've laid low for a while and checked the place out, we can think about what to do next."

Zak knew Hoole would accept Platt's terms. What choice did they have? They didn't have a ship of their own anymore.

"Very well," Hoole said.

The trip to Dagobah took less than a standard day. The planet was fairly close to normal s.p.a.ce routes-it was just that no one ever bothered to stop there.

The Last Chance dropped out of hypers.p.a.ce, and Platt made one orbit around the planet, scanning it with the ship's sensors. "I'm getting major life-form readings," she said. "There's something alive down there."

"A lot of somethings," Zak said. Platt had allowed her pa.s.sengers to sit in the c.o.c.kpit during the landing. Zak stared through the viewscreen at the glowing green ball that was Dagobah.

Tash, who had been studying the planet intently, suddenly whispered, "There's something weird there."

"What was that, Tash?" Hoole asked.

Tash blinked as though coming out of a trance. "I... I don't know.

I just got a feeling."

"Perhaps we should reconsider landing here," Hoole said to Platt.

The smuggler laughed. "What, because your niece has a case of nerves? Happens to kids during s.p.a.ce travel sometimes. Forget it."

"We have learned to trust Tash's feelings," Hoole explained. "They have saved our lives several times."

"Is it a bad feeling, Tash?" Zak asked, wishing he had her intuition. She always seemed to know what was going to happen before it did.

Tash shrugged. "No, not a bad feeling. A good feeling. Well, no, not exactly good either . . ."

"Well, no matter what you're feeling, we're landing now, so strap yourselves in," Platt said.

The ride down into Dagobah's atmosphere rattled their bones. The ship's frame groaned and squealed. Platt and Tru'eb had to scramble to keep from crash-landing. As it was, their ship hit the ground a little too fast and plunged into the swampy surface of Dagobah.

"Everyone all right?" Platt called out.

"I feel like all my teeth got knocked loose," Zak said.

Platt grinned. "First rule of piloting: If your pa.s.sengers can answer the question, then the landing was good. Let's see the sights."

She popped out of her crashwebbing and hurried to the hatch. Tru'eb and the rest of the smugglers followed. Zak, Tash, and Hoole brought up the rear of the small party.

The moment Platt opened the hatch, a thick odor flooded into the ship from outside.

"Ugh!" Zak almost gagged. "It smells like rotting leaves."

"Rotting something, anyway," Platt said, wrinkling her nose. "Come on, let's go."

Zak, Tash, Uncle Hoole, and the smugglers stepped out onto the world called Dagobah.

The atmosphere was dark and wet. The ground was covered with pools of water, sometimes ankle-deep, sometimes much deeper. Even the higher ground was muddy and squished under their boots. Gigantic gnarled trees rose up all around them, reaching into a dark roof of branches and leaves so thick they blocked out the sun.

"They're called gnarltrees," Tash said, pointing to the trees.

"That's what the records say."

Zak grimaced, irritated that, as usual, Tash knew more than he did.

"Whatever they're called, they sure make it dark down here."

"We've got glowrods," Platt said. She pulled a short tube from a pack on her shoulder and activated it. The other smugglers lit more glowrods, casting a circle of pale yellow light around them.

Mist drifted through the trees. Unseen creatures skittered across branches or splashed in puddles. They could hear distant shrieks and calls, whistles, and long, spooky moans. Zak heard something flap its wings over his head, but by the time he looked up, it was gone.

"I see something through those trees," Hoole said, pointing. "A small structure of some sort."

"Good," Platt responded. "I landed as close to the explorers' camp as I could."

The group trudged through knee-deep water until they reached what had once been the explorers' camp. Zak was impressed with Platt's piloting skills-she'd landed within fifty meters of her target.

The camp was a collection of one-story buildings barely tall enough to stand in. Most of them had been overturned, and years of rain and floods had sunk them into the dismal swamp.

"Just as I thought," Platt said. "They set up flimsy shelters, and I bet they didn't even use energy shields to protect the camp. They were more interested in studying the planet than staying safe."

"They were scientists," Hoole said. "They were very brave."

"And stupid," Platt said. "Bravery doesn't count if you're dead."

"Look at this," Tash called out. She had crossed to the other side of the camp. "I think I found some kind of path."

The smugglers carried glowrods over to Tash for a better view. In the pale light, they could see a line of moss-covered stones leading away from the old camp.

They were stepping-stones.

Platt studied the stones for a moment. "The explorers must have built this path when they landed here."

Hoole wasn't convinced. "That seems unlikely. The camp structures have all collapsed or been swallowed by the swamp. If this path were forty years old, it wouldn't have survived."

"Then that means someone has been here more recently," Zak pointed out.

Platt drew her blaster. "If that's true, this will be a lousy secret base. Let's have a look."

Boldly, she jumped out to the first stepping-stone. It sank a little under her weight, but held. Tru'eb went next, with Hoole and the Arrandas behind. The others brought up the rear.

The stepping-stones led straight through a dark, fetid swamp. As they walked, Tash pointed out various plants and small animals she had read about in the records.

Why does she always seem to know everything? Zak said to himself.

He thought back to Nar Shaddaa, when Tash had helped Hoole defeat the bounty hunter while he had done nothing. And then, later, when he had been stunned by Boba Fett, Tash had tried to fight the killer off.

Now she was flaunting how smart she was.

It wasn't fair. He didn't have the Force. How could he hope to match his sister?

Now and then a stone was missing and they each had to make a long jump to the next step. At one particularly long gap, Platt had to shift herself to the back edge of her stepping-stone and use a running start to reach the next one. Tru'eb made the jump, and Hoole hopped across easily on his long legs. Tash gathered herself and leaped. Her feet just reached the edge of the next stepping-stone. She slipped on the mossy surface, but Hoole grabbed her and pulled her up.

"Can you make it, Zak?" the Shi'ido asked.

If Tash can make it, I can make it, he thought. "Sure!" he said aloud.

Zak backed up to the edge of his stepping-stone, took two small steps, and launched himself into the air.

The instant his feet left the ground he knew he wasn't going to make it.

He came down a half meter short, falling chest-deep into the cold, murky swamp water. He felt his feet stick in the ooze at the bottom. But he didn't care about the cold or the slimy water. His cheeks flushed red with embarra.s.sment as the others started to laugh.

But the next moment, all the color drained from Zak's face.

Two figures were rising up out of the water beside him. Zak saw two human heads covered with stringy hair, two sets of pale eyes, two gaping mouths missing several teeth, and two sets of bony arms. The skin hanging from those arms looked old and dead.

They were corpses. Human corpses.

And they were reaching out to grab him.

CHAPTER 6.

Shouting in fright, Zak tried to scramble up onto the steppingstone, but he slipped on the moss.

He felt a cold, wet hand close around his arm.

Before he could cry out again, Platt was kneeling beside him. She jabbed her blaster over Zak's shoulder and fired. The corpse screamed and let go, falling into the water with a splash.

As friendly hands pulled Zak up to safety, Platt swiveled her blaster to fire at the other corpse. But this one threw its hands up in front of its face and wailed, "No, please!"

Platt's finger eased off the trigger. The corpse continued to back away through the waist-deep water. Its pale, frightened eyes looked from the newcomers to the body of its companion, now floating on the surface, and back again. "Don't hurt me."

"Why not?" Platt said in a hard voice. "You were going to hurt one of us."

"Wait," Hoole said firmly, putting one hand on top of the smuggler's weapon.

From the safety of the raised stepping-stone, Zak took a second look at his attacker. It obviously wasn't a corpse-it was a young human male. But his skin was so pale that Zak was sure the man had never spent any time in the sun. And he was incredibly thin, like a living skeleton.

His sunken cheeks and eyes gave his head the look of a skull.

"Why did you attack us?" Hoole asked.

The pale man shook his head, his stringy hair flopping around his neck and face. "Did not attack. Tried to help. Boy fell into water. Tried to help."

"That's not what it looked like from here," Platt muttered.

"Tried to help," the skeletal man insisted. He glanced again at his dead companion.

"Who are you?" Tash asked.

The man's eyes narrowed. "I live here. Who are you? You are not from Dagobah."

"No," Hoole answered before anyone else could. "We're here to explore this planet."

The skeleton's eyes lit up. "Explorers? The parents were explorers!"